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Sunday, 5 July 2015

Ted beats the heat

…yes it’s official London is having a heatwave, and it’s actually
really rather hot. In the parks there are deckchairs to lay in with cider and
ice cream a mere slightly sticky paw wave away. Outside of London at the seaside
... well the lobsters aren't actually hiding out in the cooling seawater as you’d normally expect. Oh noooooo ... they are in fact laying
on towels on the beaches turning that cooked lobster red colour!!!

I got a tip off from someone who lives in a year round hot place and
shall remain nameless (Jenni) that the best thing to beat the heat is … wait
for it … watermelon!! So naturally, I looked it up and she is totally right – watermelon is a gift for the heat, and a
really ancient one as well (secretly of course I was hoping that it was craft
beer, but you probably guessed that already right) ... Yes ancient, way way older even than Mark
Twain’s creation Huckleberry Finn and his partner in crime Tom Sawyer, smashing
open (stolen) watermelons and spitting the pips into the Mississippi river in
the sweltering humid heat of a southern American summer.

We think that today’s watermelon ancestor grew
wild in the deserts of southern Africa, where it was shall we just say, not the
attractive plant we all know today. It
was a hard shelled wizened rather ugly thing with its true beauty being that it
provided a source of safe and nutritious liquid for the desert dwellers like
the Kalahari tribes. The Egyptians have cultivated it for the same reasons since
the 2nd century. Seeds were even found in Tutankhamen’s tomb no doubt to nourish
him in the after-life of course (watermelon daiquiris anyone?) .

The
Chinese quickly got in on the act (well as fast as you can when travelling overland
by yak and camel and then returning by standard class elephant) and are now the
largest producer of watermelon globally.

So what’s so good about them Ted – they are just mostly
water aren’t they? Well yes … so there we have hydration in itself … but, they
also contain the A, B, C of vitamins and the magic lycopene that we know
reduces the risk of heart disease, various cancers and wait for it ... protects
the skin from the harmful UV rays of the sun!!!

Once we had discovered this, one of my long standing partners
in crime who shall remain nameless (Helen) and I immediately went shopping …
her for a bikini with a watermelon print, me for craft beer.

8 comments:

After hollowing the watermelon out, Aussie men at the cricket will even wear them as hats to beat the heat ~ of course copious amounts of beer involved too to be seen in said garb. You should be able to find images on Google of watermelon helmets if you don't believe me.

This is good to know! I am hating this heat and anything that will help is a bonus. I've even taken to sitting on my dog's cool mat (what a great invention that is!). I wonder what I will look like with a watermelon helmet on too!! x